


Naivete

by Occula



Category: U2
Genre: Feels, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-02
Updated: 2017-10-02
Packaged: 2019-01-08 00:04:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12243216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Occula/pseuds/Occula
Summary: Love, denial, and all the rest of it.





	Naivete

**Author's Note:**

> Posted on LJ on 8/15/2003.

The first time, I couldn’t believe how lucky I was.

I was that naïve.

I’d been trailing you like a lovesick puppy for weeks, for months, hell, for years. I thought you, somehow, were the only one who hadn’t seen it. I was pretty obvious. But I couldn’t stop myself.

Finally, it was so simple. The four of us watching some lame movie in your room. Bono and Edge left when it was over, but I’d just opened a beer, and I couldn’t yet pry myself away from you.

When I did get up to go, you grabbed my wrist in your hard, strong hand.

“Stay.”

“What —”

Then you were kissing me, hard and hungry. “You’re staying here tonight.”

My fate was sealed.

That night — that blessed, cursed night — that first time, you were a little hasty, a little rough. That was all right with me. You couldn’t have kept me from getting off that night no matter what you’d done to me or how selfish you’d been. But it wasn’t that brusque. There was kissing, there were touches —

We’d been friends forever. I knew you cared for me …

What I didn’t know was how … rigid you could be. How strict. You drew sharp lines around that encounter, and within those lines it was to stay.

You made that abundantly clear when I tried to kiss you goodbye in the morning.

After that you turned to me occasionally. A commanding, sometimes sneering “Come by later.” Or a wink and a smile as you slipped a key into my pocket. You were a chimera, cruel one time, gentle and tender another, rough and hasty on another occasion, but you were always in charge, and it was always all right with me.

That’s what I think you don’t understand.

You think I can’t love you, that because I’m a promiscuous whore I’m not capable of such feelings. You couldn’t be more wrong about that.

I love you, god damn it. I love you, you bastard. God, how naïve are _you_?

I’ll do it any way, any time you want. Not just because it’s good and I like it all ways and always, but because it’s you. I’ll take any scraps and crumbs I’m offered from your table — excuse me, _Ann’s_ table. I’ll follow all your rules, if I can only have you from time to time and pretend, for each duration, that some part of you beyond the physical belongs to me.

I always think, _maybe this time_ , even though I know better.

Maybe this time I’ll be good enough. Maybe I’ll _be_ enough, I’ll _give_ enough, maybe this time the emotions I … I think I see on your face will last …

No. Always no.

Each time sinks my always-futile hopes a bit lower; each time, it’s more hopeless.

This may seem unlikely coming from me, but I just can’t separate all these things. Not the way you can. I can’t look into those burning eyes, devour that luscious mouth and be devoured by it, and return easily to aloofness. Can’t let you take me to those magnificent peaks and then pretend they never existed.

_Can’t._

I also can’t refuse you.

Just last night — just _hours_ ago — you pinched, tickled, and teased me, laughed at me, not cruelly but oh, so seductively. Kissed me until I was mad for more. Let me touch you, let me _love_ you. When you made love to me … it was so slow, so gentle, so companionable. How could you do it like _that_ and have it just be fucking?

God damn it, how?

I watch you this morning, the alpha wolf, confident and at ease, talking, laughing, bullshitting, buttering a fucking bagel.

Nothing of significance happened to you last night.

What happened to _me_ last night will nurture me for God knows how long, firing my fantasies as well as sustaining my heart. It’s written all over me, while nothing’s written all over you. … Just as, literally, I begged you to mark my body, just as I know better than to dream of defacing yours.

The others know, of course. I’m far too obvious, sitting apart, a cup of coffee on one knee, not eating. Bono drifts over and lays a gentle hand on my shoulder.

“You all right?” he murmurs, knowing I’m not.

“Of course,” I say as lightly as I can, letting gratitude show in my eyes for a moment only, just long enough that I know he sees.

That’s one of the rules. Don’t admit anything. If you overheard me commiserating or crying on Bono’s shoulder … you’d wait until we were alone, very alone, _intimately_ alone, and then tell me exactly why you weren’t going to touch me and I wouldn’t be touching you.

I look back at my coffee. I swallow hard.

“I’m sorry,” Bono says, quietly, as heartfelt as only Bono can. “I’m sorry.”

I nod miserably and he gives my shoulder a final squeeze and moves away.

I lift my chin and square my shoulders. I think posh thoughts. You glance over. My heart does not break.

As far as you know.


End file.
